Archive for January, 2011

QOTD: Would You Take LinkedIn Public Now? [Digital Daily] “I would not. I like to wait a little bit longer. I don’t think there’s any rush to go to the public markets. And certainly the advice we give to our CEOs is take time, remain private as long as you can, build the business, build the profitability, and most importantly keep the product passion that is the definition of all the great companies out there. The ones who don’t have the long-term, deeply intense 24/7 product passion hit the rails, and I would point to Yahoo and AOL as two that have certainly done that.” – Jim Breyer of Accel Partners

By Amit Agarwal, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal When Apple announces a new product, it is not uncommon to find scores of people queuing outside their retail stores on the launch day hoping to grab a unit before the store runs out of stock. The queues are often longer for products like the iPad, where Apple has managed to create a new category of computing devices that fit perfectly between a smartphone and your computer. On Friday Apple launched the iPad in India but if you were expecting a similar reception for this “magical” device here, you’ll be mostly disappointed. That’s because the India launch is happening some nine months after it became available in the U.S. and therefore a lot of people, who would have bought that device on day one of its launch, may have already got it with the help of their friends in U.S. or even from the gray market. There’s another reason why most people here aren’t very excited about the first-generation iPad. There are rumors that the next version of the iPad, which is expected to be thinner and lighter, may be announced in the next few months. Read the rest of this post on the original site

TV News: Company looks to competitivity in Spanish market -- The world's largest producer of Spanish-language content Televisa confirmed Friday it is in talks with a number of players to merge Spanish free-to-air broadcaster La Sexta with a larger conglom.

Graphic images and videos of violence and swarms of protesters in Egypt have helped communicate the impact of anti-government demonstrations to the world. The near-total shutdown of Egyptian Internet access is also something that benefits from illustration. What exactly Egypt did to cut online access isn’t that well-understood–the informed hypothesis we’ve seen indicates that the government made phone calls to the nation’s major providers, shutting down all of them but one and making 93 percent of Egyptian networks unavailable. Here’s a chart that shows that process, via Internet routing analytics firm Renesys: And here’s Renesys’ illustration of withdrawn Internet prefixes: Here’s network security provider Arbor Networks’ illustration of the dramatic drop of traffic to Egypt: And here’s a before-and-after visualization of Internet routing in Egypt published on the blog Extra Exploit .

Groupon, which is still trying to figure out how to break into China, is close to investing in one of the largest group-buying sites there, we have learned. The daily deal site is mulling a strategic relationship with Lashou , which has experienced astronomical growth on par with Groupon. Sources close to Lashou tell us that since the company launched in March, it has hired 1,500 employees and operates in roughly 200 markets in China. Most impressively, its revenues are now totaling $3 million per week for an annual run rate of more than $150 million. Sources say Groupon may participate in Lashou’s next round of funding, which is on track to give the company a $1 billion valuation. Groupon has already submitted a term sheet, we have heard. A Groupon spokeswoman declined to comment. The deal could still fall apart. Groupon has not appeared to have decided on one strategy for entering the market. Other options it is weighing include forming a strategic alliance with Chinese Internet giant Tencent , or even hiring its own staff and working alone. The Chinese market is known for being difficult to enter, and Groupon is feeling the pressure to get a piece of the action. To be a serious international player without the economic powerhouse is less than ideal as it prepares for a public offering, ( which CEO Andrew Mason admits he hasn’t made a decision about yet ). So far, Groupon’s efforts in China have been scattered. Kai-Fu Lee, the former president of Google China, who has an influential blog, has written about Groupon’s approach, saying that it has been relying on a company it purchased in Germany last May to lead its expansion into China, Xinhua reports . The rumor mill is rife with other reports of Groupon’s aggressive attempts to hire employees from other group-buying sites. It also suffered a recent setback when Ren Xin, who reportedly was in charge of marketing in China, resigned to consider other job opportunities. While not operating yet in China, Groupon does have a presence in Asia . Groupon is in Hong Kong, Singapore, the Philippines and Taiwan through the acquisitions of daily deal sites uBuyiBuy, Beeconomic and Atlaspost, respectively. Much like the U.S., China has tons of group-buying companies fighting to be No. 1.

In the latest executive departure to strike Yahoo, mobile business development VP Michael Shim is leaving the company at the end of the month to join Groupon, Mobilized has learned. Shim, who has helped Yahoo in its partnerships with mobile carriers and cellphone makers, will head up mobile partnership efforts at Groupon. His departure follows the exit of other top mobile executives in recent years, including Marco Boerries, who left in 2009 , and David Ko, who left in October to head mobile at Zynga. A Yahoo representative confirmed Shim’s planned exit and said that Shim’s boss, Senior VP of Business Development Raymond Stern , will assume Shim’s responsibilities. The move comes as the local deals market gets increasingly crowded, with both Facebook and Google getting in on the act. Yahoo itself announced a local offers program back in November, while Groupon rival LivingSocial scored a lot of attention and new customers last week with a nationwide deal on Amazon gift cards . Google offered billions for Groupon , but in the end the company decided to stick it out and is clearly bulking up for a major battle. Update: 9:47 am PT: Groupon confirmed the move, noting that Shim will be heading its efforts to expand Groupon’s reach on mobile devices, working alongside Mihir Shah, Groupon’s VP of mobile. “We’re thrilled to have him,” a Groupon representative told Mobilized.

In the latest executive departure to strike Yahoo, mobile business development VP Michael Shim is leaving the company at the end of the month to join Groupon, Mobilized has learned. Shim, who has helped Yahoo in its partnerships with mobile carriers and cellphone makers, will head up mobile partnership efforts at Groupon. His departure follows the exit of other top mobile executives in recent years, including Marco Boerries, who left in 2009 , and David Ko, who left in October to head mobile at Zynga. A Yahoo representative confirmed Shim’s planned exit and said that Shim’s boss, Senior VP of Business Development Raymond Stern , will assume Shim’s responsibilities. The move comes as the local deals market gets increasingly crowded, with both Facebook and Google getting in on the act. Yahoo itself announced a local offers program back in November, while Groupon rival LivingSocial scored a lot of attention and new customers last week with a nationwide deal on Amazon gift cards . Google offered billions for Groupon , but in the end the company decided to stick it out and is clearly bulking up for a major battle. Update: 9:47 am PT: Groupon confirmed the move, noting that Shim will be heading its efforts to expand Groupon’s reach on mobile devices, working alongside Mihir Shah, Groupon’s VP of mobile. “We’re thrilled to have him,” a Groupon representative told Mobilized.

Google is going after “scraper” sites that copy and paste other people’s content, via a change in the search engine’s algorithm. Google engineer Matt Cutts made the announcement on his personal blog today, as a follow-up to a much-discussed post on Google’s official blog about sites with “shallow or low-quality content.” Many observers thought Google’s original note was about Demand Media, but Demand CEO Richard Rosenblatt says that’s not the case.

Nokia faces some very significant challenges. The game has changed from a battle of devices to a war of ecosystems and competitive ecosystems are gaining momentum and share. The emergence of ecosystems represents the broad convergence of the mobility, computing and services industries. In short, our industry changed, it’s time for Nokia to change faster. – Nokia CEO Stephen Elop As Nokia CEO Stephen Elop said during the company’s Thursday earnings call, Nokia faces significant challenges in competitiveness and execution. And nowhere is that more clear than in its recent performance in the smartphone market. Nokia may be the world’s largest smartphone maker, but it’s also the world’s slowest growing. As Bernstein analyst Pierre Ferragu points out this morning, Nokia has been ceding ground precipitously on the smartphone front, with sequential smartphone growth that pales to that of its rivals

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Talk NYC/WW is your daily download of the tech, marketing and advertising news you need to know. It’s smartly curated to keep you up to speed on the innovators and innovations that are shaking up the digital world today.